Writing about Windows Phone 7 Development

Writing about Windows Phone 7 Development

Well it took me a little longer than planned to consolidate all of this – things would’ve been a lot quicker if my stomach wasn’t perpetually doing somersaults and my car hadn’t almost caught fire. Anyways….

I got a great response to requests for authors in my last post – thank you – if I haven’t replied to your mail that’s an oversight but with so many people responding, managing it via email alone is starting to get tricky. Instead I’ve summarised below where I think we’re at.

I’m Still Looking For People

… willing to write about Windows Phone development – contact me via the blog or ping me at @MikeOrmond – even if the topic has a name against it below. These aren’t set in stone by any means. The more help we get the better!

We still have a number of areas with no name against them and some of the areas are big enough that they could be divided up amongst multiple writers. So don’t hesitate and please encourage others to get in touch too.

Don’t Panic!

Before we go any further I want to make clear (before anyone panics)

Just because your name appears below doesn’t mean you’re committed

A few people suggested multiple areas they could contribute – I’ve put your name against all of them – that doesn’t mean you have to do all of them

Equally, because your name appears below doesn’t guarantee that what you write will get in

There has to be some form of review process to keep the quality high

There are some areas where quite a few people volunteered – we have to agree how to approach this

Are those areas big enough to be sub-divided?

Do we adopt a collaborative approach?

Do we gather with our mates outside in the carpark?

Topics Outline and Names

Intro / Welcome to Windows Phone

The Platform (Chassis)

The Windows Phone Developer Tools (Fx choice, tools and emulator)

Silverlight on Windows Phone (If I'm a SL dev, what differences do I need to be aware of)

Alex Blount

XNA on Windows Phone (ditto for XNA)

Ahmed Hakeem

Design for Windows Phone (design guidelines, Metro etc)

Gergely Orosz

Application Lifecycle (Tombstoning etc)

Dominic Betts

Accessing Phone Features (launchers and choosers, input features)

Pete Vickers

Pivot and Panorama Controls

Gary Pretty Apurva Amin Mike Hole Alex Blount

>>> Nested Scroll Viewer in a Pivot

Ben Cameron

Touch, Accelerometer and Orientation

James Ashley

Location Aware Applications and Mapping

Pete Vickers Andy Gore Gergely Orosz Mike Hole

Networking on Windows Phone

>>> Data consumption with JSON & WCF

Andy Gore

Azure as a Cloud Based Service

Mike Hole

Push Notifications & Live Tiles

Dominic Betts

Reactive Extensions

Dominic Betts

Browser Applications

Security

Sasha Kotlyar

Optimising Performance (Memory usage, startup time, transitions etc)

Sasha Kotlyar

>>> Serialization

Gergely Orosz

Marketplace (designing for 1st time approval)

Sasha Kotlyar

Marketing your Application

Ian Walker

More Help

I’ve also has offers of help from Chris Hay, Paul Marsh and Scott Lovegrove. Chris / Paul if you could let me know if there are specific topics you’d like to tackle that’d be helpful.

Where do we go from here?

Well, if you’ve offered help it’s a good opportunity to review the outline above and let me know what you feel you can do or whether you want to make any alterations. Next step would be to start with an outline of the content you’re going to write and I think, given the scope of the project, some sort of peer review process would be useful. That way should help ensure areas are fully covered, errors are spotted and the quality bar is kept as high as possible. I’ll give that a little thought.